Can you work with free email campaigns for selling services rather than products?
Actually yes, of course.
For any type of service?
I would say so, although it is not always easy, in fact in some cases the process could be more complex.
Why are we asking so many questions?
A few days ago, after sending one of the articles in our blog, I received a question via email from one of our customers, Gedal.es
The question was more or less the following:
– This is an accommodation service specialized for companies. We work searching and managing rentals, hotels, hostels, apartments, ETC to meet the requirements of corporate clients and employees who are looking for accommodations in other cities or states.
– The objective is to improve engagement, so that customers can return to the website, request services, etc.
The question was also about the difficulty of generating content and articles for the type of target customer, and the difficulty of offering specific promos because of the type of service (they will search for the best options and therefore the company will have no control over the price of accommodation).
Nor is it a service in which I have extensive experience.
But in Mailrelay, we like to help our users so that they can send free email campaigns, always trying to do our best.
At the end of the day, our blog was created to answer the questions of our customers about email marketing.
Free email campaigns for search services or price comparison
One of the difficulties that we would find in the case of this company would be to generate quality content regularly.
Usually their only would access the website when they needed to find accommodation for their employees, at other times they wouldn’t have any reason to visit the website.
Also it is almost impossible to offer tips and tricks to subscribers, for this kind of services.
But perhaps this is the first starting point to learn how to work with free email campaigns to promote services:
1) Capture the emails of users who visit the site for the first time
Probably the company will have one or more campaigns for generating traffic for the website, and so the company could take advantage of this investment adding a pop-up to capture the email of the visitors.
You cannot send offers with discounts, but you can offer your experience.
If you were working with this company, you could explain in the pop-up that if the visitor leaves his email, you will contact the customer and help ensure a better service, offering your expertise to get more satisfactory results. If the user fills in his email you could send an autoresponder indicating that briefly a member of your team will contact the customer to help him personally.
Thus, it will be possible to convert a greater portion of your traffic.
2) Segment by location
Another important aspect would be to segment users by location, allowing subscribers to select from which cities or states they wish to receive information.
It is important to understand that, although at first you didn’t plan to send any content or promotions, by segmenting will be able to work better with your database in the future to send free email campaigns.
In addition, the segmentation is a critical component to send free email campaigns, no matter what type of product or service you work with.
3) Interesting information by location
If the segmentation was done correctly, later you can create interesting newsletters.
For example, a mailing on cheaper accommodation for a specific location.
Or events, fairs, etc. which will occur at the site or in the nearby.
4) Success Stories
This would be another type of content that the company could generate, which I believe it would be very useful to transmit confidence to users.
Create content with the satisfied customer experiences and send it for other subscribers/customers, as it will increase their confidence in your services (in addition to sending free email campaigns with this content you can add it on your website) to increase the chances of that user contracting yours services again.
It is not necessary to create something elaborate or complex, the important thing is to have the customer feedback, explaining how you helped him, that he saved money by working with your company or some other advantages, because this information will be enough to show your new visitors that you are trustworthy.
5) Notifications/reminder of your services
From time to time, the company could also send a mailing only to remind the customer of its existence, with notifications of the services provided.
Perhaps it could be interesting to take advantage of these notifications to include success stories or more brief testimonials from other customers.
In summary
Send free email campaigns based on content generation can be difficult or complex, in this case, in addition to having an impact and creating branding.
But that doesn’t mean you cannot use email marketing effectively, the important thing is to try new ideas and measure the results.
Creating autoresponders to new subscribers, to help them become customers, to convey confidence and to remind customers that your company remains active is perhaps the key here.
So it may be necessary to send your free email campaigns less frequently, perhaps every 15 days or even just a monthly newsletter.
Probably you would not have so many new things to send, and also it is important to remember that many subscribers will not be as interested in reading everything that is sent, especially if the email is related to events in other cities.
And these are the main points to consider.
Do you have other ideas?
What do you think would be essential to work with free email campaigns for search services or price comparison?